Happy New Year 2010

If whenever I have a birthday, I get a little bit depressed and pensive, then every New Years I get a little happy and hopeful. I know that it's a little bit contrived, but it's just the way that I feel. So much possibility for the future. My resolutions for 2009 were to write more and to be more honest. To that end, I started this blog. Which I think helped me a little bit to do both. As for this year, I went pretty modest with the goal of drinking more water. What could possibly go wrong with that? Anyways, for my first post of the new year, I get to write about one of my friends with whom I go way back; I'll call him Not Crazy (NC).

Anyways, NC and I met back in my sophomore year of high school. We went to high school together, we went to college together, we shared a ton of misadventures together. December 13th of 2009, NC's parents called the cops on him, he was taken in and got a 5150. As I've previously worked in a psychiatric inpatient facility in California, I was well aware that the 5150 is a 3-day involuntary hold, which can be upgraded to a 5250, the 30-day involuntary hold. I don't know exactly what NC said or did but he got that upgrade too. So lucky him, he got to spend Christmas and New Years in a loony bin. Or so I thought. I got to see him the day after New Years and I found out that he was actually staying at a "clean living" home. He seemed all right. I was out in Los Angeles with My Love (ML) and went to see NC with ML and a couple of other mutual friends. Walking in to visit felt a little like Buckner walking back into Shea. The layout was pure frat house. However, the difference was that instead of kegerators and beer-pong tables, there were all the hallmarks of 12-step programs. Lots of coffee, ashtrays, and friend of Bill W. literature scattered all around. Having regularly attended 12-step meetings in the past, I knew the scene very well. We were told to have a seat in the lounge and that NC would be right out. It took maybe the longest 5 minutes of my life sitting there and waiting. I wasn't sure if I was going to get the NC that I knew so well, or someone waxing manic, talking a mile-a-minute, or possibly a haldol'ed out shell of a former human being. Luckily, the person who emerged was NC, just like I remembered him. He said that he was actually in the middle of a class and that we should come back in about 20 minutes. We went to the burger stand across from the house, had some snacks and in 20 minutes NC came outside and we sat outside the house catching up.

This wasn't quite what I was expecting. Being on a 30-day involuntary hold, NC wasn't behind any locked doors. He could have just strolled out to the car with us and rolled away it seemed. But for now, he was staying put. If he did AWOL, I'm sure there would have been some consequence for sure, and I really didn't want to find out about it. It was quite a scene, the 5 of us sitting on a beautiful day in Southern California, the least crazy and least addict prone person in the group had somehow become the person who ended up in treatment. Like I said, I don't know the full story and I didn't want to press, but my theory is psychiatric mismanagement. Sometimes the meds that are supposed to make you sane, all they do is just make you crazy.

Playing Doctor

So at this point My Love (ML) and I have flown together out of New York twice. Both times we were the doctors on board that had to respond to medical emergencies in mid-air. The first time seemed pretty basic. There was a Russian speaking gentleman in the first row with chest pain. The flight attendant asked overhead if there was a doctor in the house. I was the first one up and after my recent bout of medical training, I can pretty much manage chest pain in my sleep. Aspirin, nitrates, oxygen, morphine, chest x-ray, ekg, blood count, cardiac enzymes, and so on and so forth. The list goes on but suffice to say that I know it well. Someone near the back had some nitroglycerine so I put one under the guy's tongue. Later, someone got an aspirin out of the plane's first aid kit and I had the guy chew it up. I gave him a quick physical exam, regular heart rate, good lung sounds. All his pulses were fine. No sweating. No levine sign. (when you ask a patient to point to his chest pain and he puts a fist or open hand to his chest instead of using a finger to point) Most of all, he just looked fine. As a medical student, I remember being taught that just a general sense of a person is usually the most pertinent physical exam finding. Also, I'm sure the nitro helped.

WORK iN PROGRESS

Birthdays

"Whenever I have a birthday, I think back over the past year, how I've spent my time, what I've accomplished, what regrets I have, how I've tried to make the world a better place, and what exactly I've been doing with my life over the past 365 days, and I think to myself: 'Man, I wish I'd gotten laid more'."
-Unknown

So for some reason or another, it seems that I've been celebrating a lot of birthdays recently. Partly because I do know a lot of people with October birthdays and also partly because one of those birthdays was my own. I was back in San Diego for the night before my birthday, starting off the night with Jelly Bean (JB), some delivery Chinese food, and the Laker game on TV. JB was a dealing with some kind of cold/flu issue and since I was without My Love (ML), I was kind of looking forward to a relaxed kind of birthday celebration.

I used to both love and dread birthdays so much more. Especially that day before, the last 24 hours of being a certain age. They used to make me so anxious and pensive. Strange as it may seem, the older I get, the more it seems like I have the time to do the things I want to do. Maybe it's because there's just so much less pressure to go out and make the most of every day like when you're young. Maybe it's because I've gained a maturity that makes me enjoy the simple things in life. Maybe it's just the calmness that comes with being in love. Whatever the reason, I spent the day before thinking more about all the things for which I was thankful rather than think about all the things for which I had regret. It was nice.

I ended that night and early morning with Vikey McStoner (VM), sitting around and just shooting the breeze like we did so many nights as medical students. And in the midst of it all was of course a great deal of phone calling to and from ML. I was without her for a whole 9 days and while it was nice to be on vacation, it was hard to be away. Of course I write this now with her a few feet away asleep in our bed and when I think of it now it all seems so silly. For a time there though, it really did take a lot of the flavor out of life being so far away. It feels good to be home, which of course is wherever I'm with her.

The Job

Alice tried another question. "What sort of people live about here?"
"In THAT direction," the Cat said, waving its right paw round, "lives a Hatter: And in THAT direction," waving the other paw, "lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad."
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

Lewis Carroll
Alice in Wonderland


Each day that goes by, I find such new and interesting ways in which my new residency program is dysfunctional and broken. Of course it all starts with the people who've somehow ended up working there and as I'm well aware, I am one of them. But in this installment, I'll tell you about another coworker who is just one of the most amusing people with whom I've ever shared a job. I'll call her NF for No Filter. I used to think I said random nonsensical things without a hint of self-awareness. NF just takes it to a whole new level. She has a little boy, just over a year old, and just the very mention of his name brings such joy to her eyes. For some reason, almost every day, without fail, she will tell you about his poo. Just today she was telling me about him making poo, how it smells like roses, and how every #2 the kid makes is a precious, precious gift to be held like gold dust with the aroma of morning coffee. Then she went into a ramble about how much she loved cleaning the kid's bits and pieces. Apparently she finds her son's wedding tackle just so adorable and before long she was telling me about how yucky she finds the naughty bits on girls. It's a tirade I've heard before but only from flaming gay men, not so much from thirty-something-year-old mothers. And while I think NF is sort of a nice looking lady, it's hard to imagine how she ever figured out how to get pregnant. She's just the kind of person who wears old-lady sweaters and sensible shoes no matter the context, I imagine her more as the kind of person who would end up with a dozen cats before she ever ended up married and parenting. That being said, I enjoy her company tremendously and in the very near future, I hope to craft more and better stories about the crazy things she says and does.

Too Long

It's been a strange 10 weeks or so since I've updated this blog. As I've known people to disappear before in the way that I've done so recently, I've learned that the reason is usually one of three things: drugs, religion, or love. I must say for me the overriding things that has so completely turned my life upside-down and inside-out has been the experience of falling in love. While there are many reason I don't want to write too much about the experience, one of the biggest things is how syrupy sweet I feel about the whole affair. I'll call the person I'm with, ML for My Love. We seemed to have formed such a disgustingly saccharine couple that while I often get looks of empathic joy and happiness from complete strangers at our public lovey-dovey displays, I feel just as often looks of jealousy mixed with nausea and I completely understand. So for now, I'll just say that I've found the person with whom I'd like to spend the rest of my life, and everyday I find my life start anew.

A Strange Night

So I've recently started at my new residency program. Done with the horrors of a medical internship and relaxing with the easy life of a medical subspecialty. And I must say, I really like most of my new coworkers. Last week, I ended up meeting one of my senior residents for a drink, staying out most of the night and sharing all kinds of secrets that should not be shared by people in the medical profession. Though I assure you, there are a lot of us with all kinds of secrets. So this particular girl, I'll call Doctor Ballerina (DB). Before going through the whole medical school / doctor route of life, she worked as a professional ballet dancer. So you can kind of already see why we would get along. It's amazing what kind of lives doctors lead before they ever put on the big white duty coat isn't it?

In any case, the strange night of the title here refers to 3 other people that have yet to be introduced in this blog. For now, I'll try and write the condensed version out right here.

So it's Friday night, DB and I had some tentative plans to hit the town. Unfortunately she seems to have taken ill that day so she had to stay home and recover. Meanwhile, I could have just gone out by myself and lived my life, but I ending up staying home, getting stoned and drunk while and eating cheap, shitty NYC mexican food and watching baseball. It was some amazing baseball on that night though, Jonathan Sanchez's no-hitter against the Padres. Anyways, game's ending and I notice a text from this girl that I wanted to get to know a little better. It's midnight and she's asking what I'm up to and if I want to come out tonight. So immediately I'm pretty happy, thinking booty call all the way. I do a little booty call dance and get dressed to head out.

Riding my scooter down to meet this girl, it dawns on me though, the girl that I wanted to plow has the same name as one of my new co-residents. Also, the girl that I wanted to plow, though I never put her phone number in my phone, I realize it's a different area code than the area code tagged to the text message that got me out that night. So I'm starting to wonder if what I thought was going to happen would actually be happening at all that night. It didn't go at all as planned.

I got to the bar and it's not the girl I wanted to plow, it's one of my new co-residents. She meets me outside the bar and informs me that another of the senior residents, the exact guy that earlier in the week within 30 seconds of meeting him, I told this girl I did not like this guy; this guy was there. The night was being quickly demoted from booty call to rescue operation. And I was a little annoyed.

So I got the 3 of us to leave the place they were at. We went to a much quiter, more chilled out pub and I had a drink and made some small talk. And as quickly as I could, I let it be known that I had to cap it and offered the girl a ride home.

So that's how we got out of there. This girl and I then ended up at some koreatown spot which probably would have been pretty cool except that I was a little annoyed and even more, that shitty mexican food was starting to destroy my gastrointestinal tract.

So then I took her home, told her that I was glad to help bail her out and reminded her to please never ask me to do that again.

Then I barely made it home. Dropped an explosive deuce, barely made it to the bed and passed out.

That was the strange night. More about the fallout from that night later on...

People getting punched